Elon Musk's Political Legacy

“All the things that we were promised since the 1950s, of space travel and flying cars... he’s doing all of those things,” said Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida.

On Sept 28, SpaceX’s Starship megarocket reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink satellites before splashing down in the Pacific – a milestone for the rocket central to Musk’s Mars ambitions.

His central role in geopolitics has also been on display, with Ukraine complaining of disruptions to the Starshield satellite communications system its military relies on.

Even the platform formerly known as Twitter is enjoying something of a renaissance, with Musk’s X now the go-to social media app for Silicon Valley insiders and the main marketplace for talk about artificial intelligence.